Ajit Pai wants to raise rural broadband speeds from 10Mbps to 25Mbps

The Federal Communications Commission is planning to raise the rural broadband standard from 10Mbps to 25Mbps in a move that would require faster Internet speeds in certain government-subsidized networks.

The FCC's Connect America Fund (CAF) distributes more than $1.5 billion a year to AT&T, CenturyLink, and other carriers to bring broadband to sparsely populated areas. Carriers that use CAF money to build networks must provide speeds of at least 10Mbps for downloads and 1Mbps for uploads. The minimum speed requirement was last raised in December 2014.

The Federal Communications Commission is planning to raise the rural broadband standard from 10Mbps to 25Mbps in a move that would require faster Internet speeds in certain government-subsidized networks.

The FCC's Connect America Fund (CAF) distributes more than $1.5 billion a year to AT&T, CenturyLink, and other carriers to bring broadband to sparsely populated areas. Carriers that use CAF money to build networks must provide speeds of at least 10Mbps for downloads and 1Mbps for uploads. The minimum speed requirement was last raised in December 2014.

The Federal Communications Commission is planning to raise the rural broadband standard from 10Mbps to 25Mbps in a move that would require faster Internet speeds in certain government-subsidized networks.

The FCC's Connect America Fund (CAF) distributes more than $1.5 billion a year to AT&T, CenturyLink, and other carriers to bring broadband to sparsely populated areas. Carriers that use CAF money to build networks must provide speeds of at least 10Mbps for downloads and 1Mbps for uploads. The minimum speed requirement was last raised in December 2014.

Didn't Pai vote against the speed requirement increase in 2014?

Yes, specifically that 25 Mbps is "fast enough" at the time and that there was no obvious reason to require that the ISP's provide faster connectivity.

Correction: Pai opposed a speed bump to 25Mbps, and preferred to keep it at 10Mbps.

Pai opposed Wheeler's 2015 decision to raise a nationwide broadband standard to 25Mbps/3Mbps. Pai said at the time that 25/3Mbps was too high and criticized the Wheeler-led majority for using different standards, namely the 25Mbps/3Mbps standard for judging nationwide broadband deployment progress and the lower standard in rural projects subsidized by the government. As chair, Pai in 2017 floated a proposal that would lower broadband standards, but he changed course after a backlash.

Pai opposed Wheeler's 2015 decision to raise a nationwide broadband standard to 25Mbps/3Mbps. Pai said at the time that 25/3Mbps was too high and criticized the Wheeler-led majority for using different standards, namely the 25Mbps/3Mbps standard for judging nationwide broadband deployment progress and the lower standard in rural projects subsidized by the government. As chair, Pai in 2017 floated a proposal that would lower broadband standards, but he changed course after a backlash.

Has anyone else been hearing commercials for mobile data and noticed that they are now actively stating that some services may be prioritized or service slowed? Specifically during the legal speil at the end of the commercial?

Has anyone else been hearing commercials for mobile data and noticed that they are now actively stating that some services may be prioritized or service slowed? Specifically during the legal speil at the end of the commercial?

Has anyone else been hearing commercials for mobile data and noticed that they are now actively stating that some services may be prioritized or service slowed? Specifically during the legal speil at the end of the commercial?

Has anyone else been hearing commercials for mobile data and noticed that they are now actively stating that some services may be prioritized or service slowed? Specifically during the legal speil at the end of the commercial?

Yes, that's been pretty common place though.

Only since NN was killed, it wasn't allowed just a short while ago.

Wasn't mobile exempt from the rules? I need to look a bit more into it apparently. And they could slow service under NN just that it had to be universal with not one app/service going faster then the other.

Has anyone else been hearing commercials for mobile data and noticed that they are now actively stating that some services may be prioritized or service slowed? Specifically during the legal speil at the end of the commercial?

Yes, that's been pretty common place though.

Only since NN was killed, it wasn't allowed just a short while ago.

Wasn't mobile exempt from the rules? I need to look a bit more into it apparently. And they could slow service under NN just that it had to be universal with not one app/service going faster then the other.

Not that I've noticed prior. Just recently have I heard things like "some services may be slowed during peak-usage hours" etc.

The Federal Communications Commission is planning to raise the rural broadband standard from 10Mbps to 25Mbps in a move that would require faster Internet speeds in certain government-subsidized networks.

The FCC's Connect America Fund (CAF) distributes more than $1.5 billion a year to AT&T, CenturyLink, and other carriers to bring broadband to sparsely populated areas. Carriers that use CAF money to build networks must provide speeds of at least 10Mbps for downloads and 1Mbps for uploads. The minimum speed requirement was last raised in December 2014.

Still only 10% the speed of other countries for the same price it is now.

Other countries don’t have the landmass to cover than we do. Show me a largely rural area in Australia and I’ll show you shitty coverage.

The carriers have been deploying traffic shaping to slow Down video for some time.

Both points are true, but even in urban areas the US lags behind.

We lag behind if you talk Wireless for T-Mobile or Sprint.

I got 25Meg down on 4G LTE to my house. (Verizon likely faster and rolling out 5G in a few neighborhoods with other carriers following next year).
My last house could hit 90Mbps down.
I get Comcast 100Meg service (Faster available, I just don't feel like paying for it).
AT&T is offering Gigabit service in my neighborhood (I'm switching to it once my Comcast new customer discount runs out).
Next year I'll likely be blending 5G and GigE fiber with a VeloCloud box.

Everyone always points to urban results in Asian megacities (where population density is insane) our countries with last mile monopolies allowed (Which the EU countries approach reminds me of their jump on GSM they got, that eventually led to them falling behind as we let the market win things out and LTE is based on CMDA's time slicing tech).

Cell phone service only sucks around my city in shitty suburbs where they don't let people put op towers. NIMBY prevention of towers is one of the biggest problems the US has that other countries don't fight.

Unless another player enters the market and lays their own fiber, you're just not going to get the incumbents to move voluntarily. Another reason the exclusive contracts are so anti-consumer.

You don't need to run fiber to the home though with 5G. You can run Fiber down a few major streets and shoot from there. Also, telco's are gearing up to radically change their CPE gear. Imagine if every Docsis modem could also do 5G. Imagine if the AT&T Fiber handoff could backhaul 4G to another pop if there's a cut.

3rd parties (Crown Castle) are running Fiber and towers and making it available to multiple third parties.
Network Slicing is going to allow virtual overlays to explode. NFV, private transport end to end. Even if you get "net neutrality" this stuff is all before the PoP so it means nothing when this stuff can do paid prioritization of its slice anyways (The same way that MPLS and Point to Points fall today under regulation). Is going to allow mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) growth to explode.

There's a narrative that we need to nationalize telecom, or that there isn't innovation going on in the last mile and it's largely being pushed by people who are missing out on all the cool stuff going on right now out of sight.

While networks have been sold as "pipe of xxx size" for years quality of peering, jitter, latency etc have existed as differentiation between carriers people buying it just were not always aware. Internap provided a far better mix than Cogent (who delivered what I always called porn grade bandwidth given the questionable peering). This granularity that network slicing can deliver is critical to a shift to declarative policies for computing and distributed applications, services meshes etc.

There's a narrative that we need to nationalize telecom, or that there isn't innovation going on in the last mile and it's largely being pushed by people who are missing out on all the cool stuff going on right now out of sight.

Or those who live in an area with AT&T, Comcast, Cox, Frontier, or any rural area and get zero of the innovation.

From Houston to rural NY, none of that stuff has existed and zero innovation or competition comes along. It's a rare, very unique market where those innovations have affected anyone for a long time.

Everyone always points to urban results in Asian megacities (where population density is insane) our countries with last mile monopolies allowed (Which the EU countries approach reminds me of their jump on GSM they got, that eventually led to them falling behind as we let the market win things out and LTE is based on CMDA's time slicing tech).

No, lots of people point to rural, poor countries like Romania and Moldova.

Everyone always points to urban results in Asian megacities (where population density is insane) our countries with last mile monopolies allowed (Which the EU countries approach reminds me of their jump on GSM they got, that eventually led to them falling behind as we let the market win things out and LTE is based on CMDA's time slicing tech).

No, lots of people point to rural, poor countries like Romania and Moldova.

Everyone always points to urban results in Asian megacities (where population density is insane) our countries with last mile monopolies allowed (Which the EU countries approach reminds me of their jump on GSM they got, that eventually led to them falling behind as we let the market win things out and LTE is based on CMDA's time slicing tech).

No, lots of people point to rural, poor countries like Romania and Moldova.

Still, way better than the U.S..

Best in the world, overall. It's amazing what they both can do in poor, mostly rural countries (and one of them is partially occupied.) They do better in rural areas than nearly any major metro in the US does. And it isn't just fiber to rural doorstep speeds, their cities rock as well, and they have incredible wireless speeds, too. And all at super low prices.

Everyone always points to urban results in Asian megacities (where population density is insane) our countries with last mile monopolies allowed (Which the EU countries approach reminds me of their jump on GSM they got, that eventually led to them falling behind as we let the market win things out and LTE is based on CMDA's time slicing tech).

No, lots of people point to rural, poor countries like Romania and Moldova.

Still, way better than the U.S..

Best in the world, overall. It's amazing what they both can do in poor, mostly rural countries (and one of them is partially occupied.) They do better in rural areas than nearly any major metro in the US does. And it isn't just fiber to rural doorstep speeds, their cities rock as well, and they have incredible wireless speeds, too. And all at super low prices.

So what are the differences there? And why are the those places investing?

Is the ISP/telecom gov't controlled? if so, well hell yeah they have a better time getting things done, it's just spend spend spend for those installs - unlike private businesses that are looking to turn a profit (some say gouging, but not necessarily I).

These places/countries are also super small in comparison to the US, I'm curious what a percentage of rural area they have compared to the US?

@Dashrender I think the ratio would remain about the same. The size of a country also affects the size of a city that can be in said country. . .

Kinda, but not as much as you'd think.

Look at Singapore, for example. Country is tiny, city is huge.

Even Tokyo. Japan is smaller than California in land mass.
California = 400 km2 and almost 40M people.
Japan = 375 km2 and 130M people.
Tokyo alone has a population of 10m. That is 1/4 of the entirety of California.

Or those who live in an area with AT&T, Comcast, Cox, Frontier, or any rural area and get zero of the innovation.
From Houston to rural NY, none of that stuff has existed and zero innovation or competition comes along. It's a rare, very unique market where those innovations have affected anyone for a long time.

I have two providers offering me Gigabit service in Houston. As 5G comes online I'll be looking at 3-4 providers with 500Mbps+ Speeds. Waco while not truly rural is is a 5G test site for AT&T.

Modulva is LTE only in major cities. Rural coverage is HSDPA primarily, and for small villages and rural area's, it's xDSL.

The Reality is I can stream 3D 4K video on my existing 120 meg down circuit. Really the draw of the newer stuff for me is lower latency, and distributed service meshes embedded in the network slices.